At the heart of UB 2020 is the desire to pursue impactful
scholarship and provide unique learning and engagement
opportunities. Our vision is that UB will be known for
addressing large-scale problems that challenge our world and
region. These problems are of such scale that progress will
only be accomplished through collaborative efforts across our
education, research, scholarship, creative activities, clinical
services, engagement and economic development expertise.

To accomplish these things, we are establishing Communities of
Excellence, which will focus on topics drawn from the Realizing UB
2020 themes – humanity, justice, environment, innovation, and
health. To achieve our goals, we will make multi-million
dollar investments to recruit new faculty to work with existing
scholars, and provide required resources and infrastructure.
We plan to establish up to eight communities over the next five
years.

All tenured and tenure-track faculty are welcome to submit
concepts by April 30, 2014. The full application process involves
concept papers, preliminary presentations (by invitation), and full
proposals (by invitation). See the call
for proposals for more detailed guidelines.

Through these Communities of Excellence, our scholars will be
recognized as thought leaders in today’s most relevant and
important areas of
inquiry.

I look forward to reviewing the creative ideas from our faculty
that will help us achieve this distinction.